S tories of wisdom acquired through struggle highlighted the 2015 MTA Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee Conference.The event, held Dec. 4 and 5 at the SheratonThe keynote speakers — Jitu Brown, a DyettHigh School hunger striker from Chicago who is thenational director of the Journey for Justice Alliance,and Clayola Brown, a former textile industryorganizer who is president of the A. Philip RandolphInstitute — addressed the enthusiastic conferenceaudience about the need to organize, build coalitionsand focus on the big picture.

EMAC Chair Christine Boseman welcomed the
crowd at the opening dinner and recognized the work
of the Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee. She also
asked how many members were attending their first
EMAC conference, and a dozen hands shot up.

Boseman introduced MTA Vice President JanetAnderson, who thanked participants for attendingand reminded them of their “ability to create a lot ofpositive change.”Every day, there are approximately 1 millionstudents in Massachusetts classrooms, Andersonnoted. “That means that every day, we impact thelives of 1 million children,” she said. “But we don’timpact just their lives, we impact the lives of theirparents, their families and their communities. That’sa lot of activism.”MTA President Barbara Madeloni introducedJitu Brown and said she first came to know aboutBrown through his work on the hunger strike, whichlasted more than a month. She called the fight to saveDyett a “profound action that was the culmination ofmany years of relationship building, of strengtheningalliances, of working through and coming to knoweach other in struggle.” Madeloni said she wastouched by the story of those who understood “thatsaving public schools was so critical that peoplewould put their lives on the line and refuse food.”She noted that movements are driven by a sharedvision to be kept in sight as small victories are wonalong the way.

B rown told conferees that he had been a youth organizer for most of his adult life, but that issues of equality and justice eventually
drove him to work on behalf of public schools.

“We did not come to the idea of a hunger strikeon a whim,” he said of the strikers at Dyett. “Wewere at a place of desperation.”A veteran of Chicago’s school councils, Brownhad seen investments that improved many schoolsthroughout the city. But he said he also saw that a“gradual disinvestment” in predominantly African-American Bronzeville, driven by racism and a pushto gentrify the area where Dyett is located, had leftfamilies and educators demoralized.

Eventually, he and other community activists
decided to act on the lack of equity for all children.
Schools in some parts of the city, he said, offer
classes in Arabic, Chinese and Spanish and have
fully stocked libraries. But in Bronzeville, Brown
said, one elementary school is so crowded that 53
kindergartners are jammed
into a single classroom.

In 2009, educators and
community activists formed
a coalition to revitalize Dyett,
the last open-enrollment
high school in the black
community. By that time
things had gotten so bad that
students took art and physical
education classes online. No
AP classes were offered. The
city marked the school for
closure.

Brown said that advocates “met with every
bureaucrat, went to every bogus school council
hearing, met with every spineless politician” in an
effort to work with the city to avoid closure. But the
city wouldn’t budge.

By last summer, Brown said, “ 12 men and
women decided to go on a hunger strike.” The
struggle for Dyett struck a nerve, he said, both across
his “hypersegregated city” and across the nation.

“We fought for this school,” Brown said. “Wegot commitment from thousands of people in the city— and not just token commitment. What came outof it was that for the first time, perhaps the first timein this country, a closed school was reopened as aHe reminded the audience of the threat ofso-called education reformers. “The privatizers arehunting your profession and they are destroying ourcommunities,” he said.

He urged educators to “work with parents, withcommunities and, as labor leaders, be committed totransforming the culture.”“Those against us have built a structure for ourdestruction,” he said. “So let’s build a structure forour salvation.”After the speech, entertainment was providedby the Eastern Medicine Singers, a Native Americangroup that shared its traditions through drummingand song.

Jitu BrownContinued on next pageMTA Retired member and presenterJulia Monteiro Johnson, at left in photoabove, and Classified Staff Unionmember Shaleah Rather, right, lookedon as Julia Hammond Cradle made apoint during one of the workshops at theMTA Ethnic Minority Affairs CommitteeConference. At left, Brookline EducatorsUnion member Jeanette Lindor, right,talked to BEU President Jessica Wender-Shubow during a break in a session. Theconference, held in early December, drewan enthusiastic crowd to the SheratonFramingham Hotel.